


Flames on Her Hands and Sun in Her Marrow

by clunion68



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Dragons, Dreams and Nightmares, Family History, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fire Nation (Avatar), Fire Nation Royal Family, Firebending & Firebenders, Fluff, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, I Made Myself Cry, Nightmares, Original Character(s), Southern Water Tribe, Zuko (Avatar) is a Good Parent, even though i wrote the damn thing, i promise i will write about these children being happy, just a wee bit there, like zuko and katara really love their kids and it makes me cry, oh also there is fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clunion68/pseuds/clunion68
Summary: She used to feel lucky she got to play with fire.And then she learned it wasn’t really a game._______________________________________________Kya sees her father in her nightmares, burns him in her nightmares. How long until it's a reality? How much can her father help her when she can barely look him in the eyes? How much can old places and old stories help when she expects them all to burn.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Flames on Her Hands and Sun in Her Marrow

_He kneels before me. Kneels before me, a child. His child. He stares up at me unwavering. He is as I have always known him. He might as well be stone, but with enough flame, even stone can melt. He is dressed in white. He is kneeling and dressed in white and I think I see his head tilt slightly downwards. He is dressed in white and gold and both his hands are turned upward in his lap. He does not plead, he does not ask for mercy, he knows as much as I how this will end. He is as I have always known him, resolute. He is dressed in white and gold, a golden collar, golden trimmings on his white robes, golden shoes, golden crown, golden eyes. He looks at me like he knows we are both hiding fear. He looks at me like he will scream in agony from the pain, but it will not surprise him. I never make it long enough to hear him scream. I only ever feel myself, towering over him, tracing the parallels in our faces as I take heavy steps, heavy threats each, towards him. Each time my foot hits the ground I find myself taller, or is he shrinking. He is as I have always known him, but his face is clear. Within it, my birthright. Within myself nothing that cannot be consumed. Nothing that cannot be scorched, nothing that cannot be fuel. Red. Red. The whole world is red and within it, there is only one flash of white, and something says he should be red too. The way my hands begin to burn, the hands I raise over my head, they say that something, someone, must burn. There is a cry that slits my throat and I feel my hands fall through the air and cut on their way down. Cut. Burn. I feel the searing. It is nothing more than fish skin. I cannot look away as we are both blinded. I cannot look away as the world turns to white. White. White._

*

The water in the pond was still. It was still and it did nothing and of course it did. That’s what it always did. It just sat there. It never listened. Her hands began to burn in frustration. She plunged them into the water. Now it moved. Any moment now her father would find her, water dripping down her arms into her sleeves. Any moment now her father would find her and wrap his arm around her shoulders and ask if she was ready. Any moment now her father would find her and she would have to watch the smile melt off his face, watch his shoulders drop, watch him cross his arms and sigh when she gave him her answer. Maybe if she stared into the pond hard enough something would click and the universe would actually understand that it had gotten everything wrong, everything mixed up.

_Come on._

It hadn’t. Of course it hadn’t. How stupid to try. How stupid to just sit there and sweat and wait for her father and try. She kept her hands in the water and thought of her grandfather. Thought of his kind words and the veil that crept over his eyes when he mentioned her namesake. She thought about the way something retracted as if somewhere in his mind he was decades younger still holding his wife in his arms, still holding his wife and his children together.

_She would like you… she would like you. And not just because you happen to have quite a name. Who named you? Someone pretty smart I bet._

Old warriors losing their edges. This was her world, it always had been. Her great uncle, her grandfather – well, one of them. They were men who had seen and fought the worst the world had to offer, men whose memories were torn and stitched together with horror, men to whom blood was as every day as the sun in the sky or the snow on the ground. And they were men who despite everything, or really because of it, still only wanted to make the ones they loved smile.

And then there was the man she was never allowed to see. The man who she only saw in old portraits found tucked away in palace storerooms. The man who for a long time, she knew, was cruel, a tyrant, a man who should never have been a father to a nation much less actual children. The man who you couldn’t quite ask questions about and get answers that didn’t involve downward glances to some dusty corner, answers that were really half-answers until you were older, until you could properly understand. That man was alive. She would never see that man. And even though now she knew the answers, the real answers, she didn’t understand. She just had nightmares.

She was only visiting her grandfather, the one she could visit, for a few weeks before returning. Just as soon as she had gotten used to the feeling that she might slip on or melt clean through the ice and snow beneath her, she had to come home. To what, exactly. There were her siblings tackling her and all her luggage to the ground the minute she stepped through the palace gates. There was her mother who had come to greet her with as many hugs as questions about her father, the house, the food, the young students, the news, all the life of her homeland that she could live through her daughter’s memory. There was her father. There was her father whose gaze she couldn’t quite meet even as he stretched out his arms to her and called her name. But of course, there was also, what, the bed the size of a room in a room the size of a house. The servants and the thing, call it guilt, that curled her stomach inward every time they would give a courteous bow and take away a dish or a dress or something that a girl Kya’s age could definitely bring back to the kitchen or certainly her own closet. With her grandfather, she had speared a fish right through the heart. She had loved it. The children had asked, they really did always ask, if she was really a firebender. If she could really, you know, just, well, make fire! Could she cook the fish? Could she cook it right now? That was so amazing that she could just cook a fish if she wanted to. She should cook the fish right now. She didn’t know how to tell them no. She didn’t know how to tell them that she could picture all their faces burning. She took a breath and willed only the fish to burn, watched its skin pucker and crackle. That night she dreamt again of her father and woke up screaming. She woke up and knew her grandfather could hear every sound.

She had missed the sun. There was something about the blanketed sky of the South Pole that could be at once comforting, hugging everyone closer, and stifling, it would sink lower and lower and eventually there would be no way to move. Some days the sun would hang heavy in the sky and seemed to sigh along with her. Strange that they should both be in this place. Even with the sun, the cold air cut clean, cut fast, and cut deep. Here the sun didn’t cut, it dipped, it dipped itself, its warmth, slowly into your back, through your clothes, through your skin, let itself settle in your marrow. Like hands in a pond. She tried to get as close to the water as possible, tried to make her back stretch as wide as possible to the sun and catch her reflection in her hands. She looked like nothing more than a series of shifting blobs. It was not the least accurate reflection. She wasn’t looking for a perfect portrait, just trying to see what her eyes looked like looking back in the moment.

There were far too many portraits of her anyway. Every year there would be one commissioned and every year the only two who liked the process were Lu Ten and Izumi. There was an incomparable power in the way they told the royal painters to do their smiles last; they were going to hold that smile the entire time. Rohan didn’t like to smile, and most years flat out refused. Kya always felt her smile was too small, and she felt small asking the painters to do her smile as early on as they could. Now her smile was just another warped blob on the water’s surface. She widened it out of spite before letting everything fall again. There was a hall full of portraits; once it had been filled with the dead eyes of mostly dead men. Now the walls tracked her as she grew, each image trailing behind the last as a shadow. Often she would hide behind a column and watch as her parents made a grand display of them to world leaders; look how much they have all grown. Often she would watch as world leaders agreed, sometimes sounding like they would rather see anything else, some echoing the same pride in the voices of her mother and father. My they _had_ grown. Yes she had grown and she would grow and grow and grow and one day a portrait as long as her father’s would drape itself from the ceiling and some expressionless rendering of her would stand stoic amongst a backdrop of painted, immovable, flame.

There were few portraits of her father as a child and certainly none on the walls. He never quite explained why, mostly chalked it up to things getting lost in the shuffle, too many things in a palace in general, her mother agreeing, how many things did anyone actually need. But there weren’t none. There weren’t none. Of the few, there was one in particular that washed up with the tide at the forefront of her memory. He must have been no older than twelve, no older than she was now. He held a pearl dagger in one hand and kept his other arm just below it, above his waist. A perfect young prince whose artist had either neglected to include or purposefully erased the soft sadness that she knew would sometimes creep into his eyes. An inscription on the portrait read “Crown Prince Zuko, Coronation of Fire Lord Ozai”. He was dressed in white. White and gold. He was dressed in white and gold, and his face was clear.

She had hoped the sun would burn her neck. Just enough so that she could bring her hand to it and cool it off. Just enough so that she, despite being far too old for such a childish practice, might knock on the door to her mother’s room with a glass of cold water, wide eyes, and a pitiful little shrug. Her hands did feel cool at the back of her neck. If she couldn’t make the water move she could close her eyes and pretend then that this was healing water. She could close her eyes and try to recreate the subtle movements of her mother’s hands, try to imagine what would run through her head, how much love would have to run through her heart and out her fingertips for the practice to work.

“Kya? Are you ready?”

The world went white when she opened her eyes again to the sun.

*

First her hands were cool. Then the afternoon sun gently dried them out, evaporated the water, let it return to the air – so there, even the sun could in its own way bend what she couldn’t. And then she mirrored her father and her father’s hands, and she might have enjoyed the warmth that both their hands created as much as she enjoyed the warmth of the sun if somehow she could still be her and he could still be him but somewhere else in time. Who did her father mirror in his movements? Often her mother, often sweeping and forceful and never without grace. Often his old friends – rounding through air or grounding through earth. And often likely, without even noticing, someone else. Someone else, whose fire burned hotter, burned blue like water. And someone else whose form would always be imprisoned within memory as much as within high stone walls.

She had wanted to say no. She had wanted to let her arms drip back into the pond, then her shoulders, her chest, her hair, she wanted to roll all the way in and refuse. See his face float into fragments from underneath the surface. Watch it swirl into disjointed pieces floating together and apart in a strange lilting dance. His eyes would detach from his cheeks and maybe then she could look at them. Sometimes, she wished he would be a little less earnest, tuck his heart back in his chest where it belonged. None of the portraits had ever captured the look in his eyes. And today he was so excited. Hands on his hips, chest puffed out like some big triumphant bird, she could picture him flinging off his regal attire, picture him humming to himself as he threw his hair up into a bun, she knew his steps would be a little lighter as he sped from his chambers to the courtyard – he would be bouncing, even, to the surprise of all those who, though in the palace daily, did retain a certain image of the Fire Lord. Knowing him, he probably grabbed some exhausted nobleman just to proclaim his daughter was finally home, he was finally going to train with her again, wasn’t it wonderful? Couldn’t he believe it? My how she’s grown. She used to race her father to the courtyard; she used to feel the flames just ready to sprout, always. She used to feel lucky she got to play with fire. And then she learned it wasn’t really a game.

“Alright, now I want you to face me.”

Kya went white as the world flashed red. He was kneeling before her. Kneeling before his child. He was kneeling and looking up at her, ready for her to make her move. He was ready to counter but she felt them both frozen. He was kneeling before her and her arms could not respond to her mind. And her mind could only see her arms aglow and on the attack plummeting and streaking their way through the air. A comet. Her mind could hear the crackling, smell flesh. How had the world grown so red so quickly around her. It radiated from her father’s head like a crown, it stained the trees and singed the sky and the birds’ calls were war cries, crowds of people waiting for smoke and agony ripping through the throat of another man. He was kneeling before her, scarred face, scarred chest just barely visible through his loose shirt shifting with the breeze – the only thing that seemed to move. _Claim your birthright, strike him thrice_. A hiss like steam, a bright flash in a tyrant’s dead eyes. She stood frozen and met her father’s eyes as their red world shrank and shrank and shrank.

And exploded in white. And then she was cold. The world was white and a white sun hung heavy just above the white horizon. And she could smell broth over the fire her grandfather had made. And she could feel the warmth of the bowl in her hands. And it felt like how it all used to feel.

_It’s all just under the surface, always. Forgiveness. If you love them and they love you, you’ve just got to…_

_Fish it out?_

Old warriors softening their edges as their grandchildren made them smile. He didn’t really know, and she didn’t really tell him the full story. Only that she had visions of hurting the ones she loved. And he didn’t really tell her in so many words that it was a part of life. It came in like the tide across his eyes, across his drooping brow and gaze downward through the ground and into his history. He cut a hole in the ice and slipped deeper into his goodbyes to his children, the goodbye he never got to say to his wife, he sinks past the fish and down into darkness only spirits and strange creatures can see, and finds his son’s young, far too young, eyes rimmed with black war paint, and his daughter’s eyes red with right and furious tears. He pulls himself out by placing a hand on Kya’s shoulder. And it feels warm, it feels like the sun dipping itself through bone. It feels red.

“Kya?”

At first, he sounded confused, the closest he’d come to sounding impatient, there was a slight exasperation in his questioning.

And she remained frozen, wondering and feeling inside how exactly a star dies.

“… Kya?”

Now as he stood, she fell to her knees, covering her eyes and feeling just one more element of heat in the way she cried. All her words kept falling back down her throat; each time she gasped for more air they fell further but tried to climb higher. She hadn’t been a crier as a baby. Unlike her brother, she graciously allowed her parents to rest most nights. So when Kya collapsed before him, letting all her world’s pain flood out, he felt the punch to the gut and sting to the eyes of someone trying to keep everything in, hold everything together so that another may be held. He never liked seeing his children cry, for any reason. He felt rage pushing on the walls of his heart when his children cried. Even if he had to be firm with them because they were crying over a silly game lost or some immature agitation that had pushed them to the point of no return, his insides knotted almost as much as their shriveled, crumpling faces. His wife was better at remaining firm, at laying down the law, at making everything cut and dry, applying a diplomatic logic even with her children. He knew it tugged on her heart too, like the moon with the tide. Despite his best efforts, the children knew their tears could carry them much farther with him.

“I… I… I…”

She was surprised she could get out so much. Her father had brought himself again to his knees and let her sob into his chest. An hour ago he had been the Fire Lord, composed, commanding, barely a hair out of place. And now he was a man, simply a father, kneeling on the ground rapidly being covered in a child’s snot and tears. Kya laughed at her father being used as a human tissue. Her laugh came out like paste, but it did come out.

“I’m sorry…” she had no idea whether or not she was shouting these words, they sounded impossibly loud as they erupted from her throat, “I don’t … I don’t…”

His arms drew her in like the low Southern sky. She had missed the sun and she had missed him. He felt so firm, so invincible, so immortal. A part of her wished to believe he was. And still, she was pulled in so close she could hear his heart beating. Feel his lungs expanding and contracting. Steady. The first thing her father had taught her was breath.

_I already know how to BREATHE! How could I be ALIVE if I DIDN’T, huh?_

He had sat with her and made her match his breath. In. Out. In. Out.

_But can you breathe like this? I bet you can. Breathe with me. We both can. Come on._

She had grown. But she was still that little girl. She was still just that little girl trying to match her father’s breath. In. Out. In. Out.

She had grown, but she tried to squeeze herself tighter into herself, curl herself back, walk backward through the shadows of herself and fit perfectly in her father’s lap. It would be easy to turn around and hug him back just as tight. But she drew her hands to her own heart. It was starting to sync with his. This was where she would be. In. Out. If you can breathe, you can stay in control. In.

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

Out.

*

_It is white and I am alone. I look left into nothing and right into nothing and I look up. I look up and it is black and I no longer know if I am alone or alive or. A spark. My father’s face again. Staring up at me. Somewhere in between pleading and resignation. I turn left to see his face and I turn right to see his face and I look up. I look up into eyes that look like mine, look like my father’s. I know they are not his. I do not know that they are not mine. I do not know that they are not the eyes of my grandfather. The one who I am not allowed to visit. The one who instead visits me in visions. Invades my mind to plant his false memories and watch them bloom. His eyes, or they are my eyes, do not let me go. They yank me back by the hair and leave holes in my head. A voice._

_Some people are born cruel_

_Some people are born of cruelty_

_I refused to -_

_Only a child_

_Only a child_

_A flash of lightning. White, blue. Another voice. A smaller voice. A voice that at once belonged and belongs to me._

_You got this one for mommy? Is that why you got married? Is that why you had me?_

_A woman, really a girl, laughs. I know this laugh. I have often wished it were a kinder one. I don’t want to look at these eyes anymore. A voice and a cry and eyes floating away on water. I am released. My head falls through my chest. Into his. I hold on to his face, palms glowing, palms melting, skin crackling. Fish skin. I smell broth. I hold on to his face and we breathe. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. His eyes are my eyes. We mirror pain back and forth. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out._

*

The harbor had shrunk. Then the city had shrunk. Then, last over the horizon, all the ridges had shrunk. They had shrunk and rounded out and become loose oblong shapes above the water before becoming nothing. Before becoming sky. Before becoming blue. It had been nothing but sea and sky for hours. The sun hovered over them, followed them, peered down at them. The morning seemed like it happened in a dream if it happened at all. Her mother had woken up early to wave them off and begin her day as acting Fire Lord. No one would tell Kya where she was being taken, but one of her father’s stories kept surfacing in her mind. It was one of those stories that she had probably been told since she was too young to form real memories. He told it like a fairy tale but he swore it was real. It really happened, right? Right. Her mother was one of the first people to hear it. And if you didn’t believe the two of them, well, just ask uncle Aang. She was five the first time she distinctly remembered the story. She was five when she begged him to tell it over and over every night until she could take over if he even paused to breathe. She was five when it all started. Lu Ten could bend water before he could walk. Kya would watch him pluck droplets out of pools and fountains like roses, and she would try to copy him. She would wrinkle her nose at a puddle and strain her arms until she shook. She would dip her hands in the sink, in the pools, in the fountains, and wait for something to ignite. And then one day it did. She was five when she truly became her father’s heir.

“Nice day.”

Her father squinted at the sea. He told fewer stories about his time at sea. Those were the ones they had to coax out of Uncle Iroh. Those were the ones that, if he was in earshot, made her father pinch his nose and sag. But it was a nice day. It would have been nicer not to have been woken up before the sun had come over the mountains. It would have been nicer if she wasn’t up half the time still trying to drown out her dreams with the quiet reality of the dead of night. Still, there was something to be said about the sunlight playing off the water. There was something to be said about a golden wake trailing through the sea behind them. It reminded her of how she would play with her brother, each discovering new little tricks for and with each other – bright sparks reflected in blue.

“Yeah.”

It was all she could grunt out. She had some early mornings with her grandfather. They would go out to sail or fish while the waters were calm. She found two things were easier about Southern mornings: the cold pulls no punches and slaps you awake instantly, and her grandfather, despite her mother and especially her uncle being two of the most talkative people she knew, preferred to let the silence of morning linger. To be fair to her father, he wasn’t exactly chatty. He let many a silence linger no matter the time of day. But fathers knocking on their daughter’s doors at otherwise still hours, no matter how gently, how considerately, would always be a sour thing. Especially if he had a bag slung over his shoulder and told you to wear some clothes you could really move in, and good shoes too. Especially if he said all of this while your ears were still catching up with your brain and so were your eyes, still only half-open.

“Hungry?”

He pulled a pastry seemingly from thin air and offered it in her direction.

"Thanks."

It had been about a week since. They hadn’t talked very much about it, not directly. Training that week had a suspiciously strong emphasis on the breath. He had brought tea to her room every day for, what they both knew were not, random check-ins. She had felt his eyes from the walkways that lined the courtyards and gardens. She let her mother braid her hair and plant a kiss on her forehead without wincing. She shadowed her brother in his training, watching water rise and fall and telling herself she had some part of it. She half-met her father’s bright gaze when he caught her up on his days, like she was doing now as he handed her lunch. It had been about a week since, and now there was this.

 _Maybe it’s an early birthday surprise_.

She saw her mother try to be cute. She saw her mother wink at her father. Even worse, she saw her father wink back. She was probably supposed to laugh. Her birthday was not until mid-winter.

She watched her father inhale, tilt his head and heart to the sky. She took a bite of the pastry. She wondered what he was thinking about. What did he really see when he looked out at the expanse. Kya saw cliffs of ice, saw the back of her grandfather’s head and his shoulders moving his paddle through waking water. She saw a setting sun and a rising moon and felt sand underneath her fingernails and behind her ears. She saw something she always wanted to walk towards if she could – the point where the sea meets the sky and the sun meets the sea. The point where they hold each other and then let each other go.

She thought to tell him that the pastry was good. She thought to ask him if there was another, unless it was for him, in which case – but he looked so still. He barely had his eyes open. Though sometimes it was hard to tell with his bad eye. She hadn’t even noticed it was a bad eye until her friends started coming around. She knew they knew what their Fire Lord looked like. She knew they knew he was marked. But they didn’t really know. They were never quite prepared. And, even with all due respect, they were children and did little to hide the shock that flashed across their faces. At least they were children; when the adults did it too she wondered if they would like the taste of flames as much as they liked the wine or the tea, or whatever else her father had been generous enough to serve them, even as they couldn’t quite look him in the eyes. Both eyes. He was so still now letting the sun take hold of him. He had let himself be taken somewhere else. Looking at him looking at the sun it had all become too bright, too much white light. White. The world was going white. In. Out. As she often did, she mirrored him. Inhaled and lifted her head and heart to the sky. She looked into the sun. The sun looked back. She blinked.

“We’re getting close.”

He sounded like a man who certainly had been at sea. A man who knew when currents changed, when the air changed. Whether he liked it or not, something from a previous lifetime had crawled into his current skin and out his mouth. He turned around towards the bow and gestured with his chin. On the horizon, the world was growing. More vague shapes that would only get clearer as they kept moving forward. Something buzzed in her fingertips and just behind her eyes. Something was curling itself around her heart and showing it to her like she had never known it was actually there. For a moment she forgot that she had no real idea where they were going, she was just thrilled that they were close. And she still had echoes of a story in her mind, a story she still was sure she knew by heart.

She leaned up on the railing and jutted her head out into the wind, over the water, like a cliff, feeling the sun braid through her hair and dip into her back. Her father joined her, made another pastry magically appear – so it seemed, and extended a hand.

“Want another?”

*

_Now the thing about the eternal flame is that you have to… well, you have to keep it going. Otherwise, it’s… it’s not very eternal, is it? So –_

_Because, because, because if you let it go out it’s very rude and then the dr-_

_Hooooold on there kiddo. We don’t want to give away the best part of the story, right?_

_We all know the story –_

_You and Uncle Aang –_

_Mommy, I forgot –_

_Me too -_

_Please, let your father finish the story –_

_Kya? Do you want to help me finish the story?_

The wind threatened to extinguish the flame as side by side they climbed higher and higher. If she thought about her feet aching, her legs begging her for rest, the wind might win. She tried to breathe in the wind, take it in and give it to her legs and the bitter soles of her feet. The Sun Warriors had told her not to let it go out, they had told the same to her father years before. And he had repeated it many times in his story. It seemed obvious to her every time he would retell that part. Of course they shouldn’t let the flame go out, but it shouldn’t be hard, you’re a firebender! Regret stung. Regret felt like straining calves and stubborn wind.

She thought back to the eyes of the Sun Warriors. Something else burned behind them, and she tried to determine what it was as the old Warrior passed along a flame of a flame. Tucked it into her hands. It felt like her grandfather handing her a spear, handing her a stone, or a bowl. It really just felt like her grandfather holding her hand in between his palms. She watched her father’s hands steady the flame. Watched him hold it right up to his chest and breathe. She would keep the flame going for the Sun Warrior chief, to figure out what was in his eyes. She would keep the flame going to do what her father could not at her age, what he could do now, with her. She would keep the flame going to gather her family around, tell the tale, and watch their eyes grow. She would keep the flame going to write to her grandfather and sign her name with pride.

She thought of the Southern children. The children loved fire. They loved the way it dared to poke their cheeks, dared to swipe past their eyes, dared to give off heat no matter how small the flame. Everyone lit up when she did. They were going to talk about this for weeks. They were always so excited to talk about it for weeks. She had done nothing more than roast a fish. They seemed marginally intrigued by her royal status, highly intrigued by stories of her mother – Master Katara’s name would live on forever, but most intrigued by fire, hers. She had tried to keep half of her focused on controlling the flame, well, controlling the children who seemed to want nothing more than to touch the flame, and half of her focused on her grandfather, the chief seated amongst his people. The chief graciously guiding them through changing times, through a world in which the children were not only unafraid of fire but couldn’t imagine why they would be. She hoped that never changed as much as he did. He made it look like the easiest thing in the world, taking pride in his granddaughter’s abilities. The way he clapped and stretched out his arm, brought her to sit at his side where her mother would have sat. Where her grandmother would have sat. He made it look easy and she imagined it was. Hard not to take pride in the blood of your blood. Hard not to see his own daughter in her. She knew. For as much as she could trace her father into her, her rounded cheeks, her hair the lightest, far lighter than her older brother’s, the way she shrugged, the way she walked, tucked her hair behind her ears, the way she laughed, all traced back to her. And in turn, she knew, to her grandmother.

She asked, once, what they would have named her if her grandmother were still alive. She watched her mother’s chest rise and her eyes dart away, and before her chest could fall she heard her father say _Izumi_. Well, what would they have named Izumi then? They just didn’t know, and it would have to be one of life’s great mysteries. She asked her grandfather for stories about her, knowing there was one he didn’t have to tell. How did he know she was the one he wanted to marry? Of course it was after he watched her plunge into the water, head first, no hesitation, using up time only to throw off the coat that might have weighed her down to save a child. But it was really, and this was the part where she would lean forward as he would, raise an eyebrow as he would, tilt his head as he would and say, it was really the way she cooked sea prunes. She giggled, he did too. There had only been a firebender in his house once, well, once before her father. To her knowledge, her grandmother had only met a firebender once. As much as her parents had given her her name, she couldn’t help thinking, so did he.

“Are you ready?”

The voice of a child, excited, waiting for a circus, echoed through his stern question. The flame in his hands that he had kept so even swelled ever so slightly. She looked down at her own. Her hands had successfully kept it, but her heart was reaching out to grab it. What would happen when she presented it. Had she always missed the terror in her father’s voice, in his retellings? Her little piece of the eternal flame was flickering almost as quickly as her heartbeat. She felt again something wrapping around her heart, wrapping itself over and over squeezing it tighter, stretching it into her ears and fingertips and forehead and toes. It had finally felt right to hold flame, but once she let it go, would it come back tenfold or not at all. Something constricted and something burst like a steam pipe, and it happened over and over inside her mind.

She felt her father’s hand at her back, felt it guiding her, still warm from carrying his flame. There was little beneath them under the bridge. The only time she had been this close to the sun was on the back of a sky bison. The first time she had been on the back of a sky bison, she cried. Even with her mother holding on to her, grounding her where there was none, even with her brother holding her hand and making silly faces, even with her father putting his hands up shouting – see it’s safe, you’re safe – even with a dear friend at the reins and nothing but reassurance that the ground wasn’t gone, the sky was beautiful, that no one would ever let her go, she cried. She cried and she screamed and she closed her eyes and folded herself into her mother’s neck until it was all over. She had heard her mother apologizing to the poor creature as she passed her over to her father. She remembers falling asleep very quickly after, draped over her father’s back.

They faced the sun and then he turned one way and she turned another. As long as she could still feel his back against hers. Firm. Immortal. She would be alright. She would be able to breathe if she was breathing with him. All she wanted to do was scream, reach for her father, shut her eyes, fold herself in, and wait for it to end.

Her heart was threatening to drown out her ears when something larger stopped it. It came out slowly, sniffing, reading the face out in the light. What was quiet breathing to the creature was the roar of the tide to the suddenly very small, very shy, very frozen girl offering a little flame as so many had before. Its body seemed endless; the cave must have gone down to the very center of the earth. First the head, glowing serpentine eyes set in a frame the size of the palace. Then an arm and another – wings. Then the train of its stomach, two more legs and the rest still yet to be seen. Golden sunlight shot through the creature’s scales. Like the sun on the sea. Like her first flames reflected in her mother’s eyes. Like a ribbon of water just about to meet an arc of fire in the courtyard under a midday sun. To feel fear and to feel love had become natural, and she felt it behind her, and in front of her it was staring her down. Inside she began to burn, no, she felt molten. The mountain had born the creature and Kya had been a witness. She felt her father’s back stretch and his arms move forward, away from her. Her elbows were fused to her sides. Just keep the flame steady.

_Any sudden movements, you might scare the fish away. You want to stay real quiet, real calm, let them come to you and then… strike._

Was she the fish now? Or was this creature? This creature was the one coming up to her, right up to her hands, not unlike a kitten she realized. A kitten that could eat her in one bite, swipe her off the bridge like she was dead skin, liquefy her in eternal flame. Still, for now, the creature was gentle. Gentle as it bowed away. Gentle as it raised itself up. Gentle as she watched its body expand and its nostrils flare. Gentle as it inhaled the flame Kya had brought it. The flame she would write to her grandfather about if her heart didn’t give out, or stop, or both, in succession, forever.

And then it dove. And its full body burst into the light like a ribbon being pulled through the air on a stick. And another came up to take its place. Red like the world in her dreams. Red like the roofs of her city. Red like the blood dispersing in the water out of the bleeding heart of a fish speared successfully. Over and over they took each others’ places until they became to her like one constant loop. One fluid ring of motion that caused her to plant her feet harder as her eyes swam and her heart started again.

Before she became fully lost in the display, her father turned her around and gave her a solemn nod. To truly see what they came here for, they had to move with the creatures. As a child, she would tug on his sleeve and whisper, _dragon dance_ , every time she wanted to practice it with her father. Even if he was in a meeting. Particularly if the meeting was incredibly important. As she grew it grew more foolish in her eyes. When was she going to need this, did they have to practice in the courtyard. Did they have to practice at all? She didn’t mind if people found them shifting through various combat forms, but the dance she used to do with her dad as a kid felt too silly. Would she still take her dolls to school? With a lingering hand on her shoulder, he squeezed once and slipped back into the first position. Of course it felt silly in the courtyard. Of course it felt silly to her. He was always reliving something grand and she was being forced to squat and twirl and bow in circles out in the open. Now with the actual dragons, her movements were fluid. She matched her father perfectly; they too formed one continuous ring, so in sync, she felt the dragons slipping away, felt the bridge slipping away, felt her memories of the courtyard and the blushing slip away. There was only her and her father and the dance she was now glad he taught her. As she bowed and turned and swept she realized she was looking for his eyes the entire time. She was turning around trying to see her father’s face clearly through the swirling dragons, through the movement of their own bodies, trying to piece together his fragmented face, trying to reach for him, circling within circling, her heart bringing the flames inside her higher and higher into her chest, pushing them farther and farther until she could feel the first sparks in her palm, spreading. In. Out. In. Out. If she could breathe, she could be in control. In. Out. In. Out. And then the spinning stopped and everything started to burn. Everything started to burn and she found herself looking directly into her father’s eyes. He was too close and he was going to burn too.

_And, and, and! And the fire was RAINBOW!_

_It was._

_Like AAAALL the colors in the WHOLE world._

_Like … red?_

_Yes!_

_Like… blue?_

_Yes!_

_Like… purple!_

_Yes!_

_Wow. Really! Hmm… Green? There couldn’t have been green!_

_Yes! Green!_

_No… No… Green fire? Really?_

_DaaAAAad youuu were there!_

_Oh, that’s right. I remember now._

It was more than she had ever imagined and it hurt to look. It hurt to look at the flames she had wanted to see her whole life. It hurt to look at her father. She remembered how much it absolutely hurt to look at her father. She closed her eyes but it was closing her eyes at the center of the sun. There was strange orange light and there was a scream waiting to rip through her. She closed her eyes and he was still there. He was always there. In front of her. He was always there in front of her waiting for his birthright, waiting for hers. Red. Red. Red all around. Burning hands, burning eyes. Crackling. Crackling. It smells nothing like fish skin. Burning skin. Burning voices. She was always there hearing the voices of people who would see her as a weapon. She would relive a false memory over and over and over until it wasn’t her father she was burning but the whole world. The whole world and with it everyone she loved. It would look like this wouldn’t it, except the flames would close in, a crashing wave that consumes and consumes and consumes and when satisfied, spits out only ash. He shouldn’t have brought her here; he was only sealing in his own demise, wasn’t he? Letting her feel this power, letting it all course through her veins to mix with the blood of tyrants that was mixed with the blood of heroes. No matter who was in her blood, it boiled. If he were smart, he would go. Leave her here and let her be consumed. She felt the heat around her and it felt red and it felt white and it felt like her nightmares and somehow like both of her grandfather’s voices, even if she’d only heard the one. If she held herself back any longer she would have given out. She opened her eyes and screamed until her throat was rust and soot and aching. She opened her eyes and cried, smearing the fire around her like ink, like paint. She felt her head fall back and her eyes widen. It was love and it was fear, it disintegrated the eyes and snuffed out the snarls of evil men, it bent Kya’s heart up and cracked it open, it flowed through all the cracks she had made in herself and let her feel how she was, yes, broken, but also open and a perfect receptacle for light. It was nothing like how her father described it and everything like how her father described it.

_Your gift is light. Your gift is creativity and it is power. Your gift is life. And it is good. It is good because you are good. Because you are light. You are creative, and you might still be little but you are powerful. So powerful! Your mother and I know some very powerful benders, and we know you. Your gift is life, Kya, and you, you are life._

The memory of her father’s words echoed over and over and over, morphing, ringing, running as she straightened her neck and lifted her eyes to finally meet her father’s gaze holding still all of her fear but finally, finally all of her love. They were the eyes of a man who was changing a nation, changing the world. They were the eyes of a man who had changed himself. They were the eyes of a man whose whole being burned with love and with hope and with the only true desire of seeing his children loved. It was the same look of old warriors softening their edges. It was the look she would memorize; carve into her heart, the look that would banish any more eyes that crept into her mind at night. It was the look she would recall so that when the next nightmare came, and they would still come, forever, she reckoned, she would extend her hand to lift her father up off the ground instead of bringing a hand ablaze with cruelty down on his open face. And even if in her dreams she found him burning, she knew by daylight, in reality, she was exactly who her father had told her she was. She would feel it all burn, but it would be the sun in her marrow. It would be light. It would be life. She was light. She was life.

She didn’t want to tear her eyes away from the flames, still, she wanted to wrap her arms around her father’s chest more, hold on to him for as long as he would let her.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

Neither knew why should apologize. But here they were. She felt she had to, at least for the person she had been in her dreams. It came roaring out of her like dragon fire. Every detail about the things that kept her up at night, every fear she had that she would be just another in the list of loved ones to burn him. She rambled and spouted and apologized over and over until it deflated her. As if on cue the dragons quite unceremoniously slunk back into their caves to rest for who knows how long. So in the end, as it often was, it was her and her father just breathing together. In. Out. In. Out. Breathing all their pain between them and letting it go. He tilted her chin up, a move he hadn’t made since she was very young.

“You could never be like them. Not for a second.”

“But –“

“They wouldn’t hesitate. They didn’t.”

He ran a hand over her cheek and let some of her tears slide down his thumb.

“You are light.”

She felt herself break a little as she exhaled.

“You are life.”

She looked up to her father’s face, there was nothing cold about it. Nothing hard about it. The portrait of his father flashed in her mind and she imagined he looked just as dead and cold in real life as he did in the picture. Her father too was light, he too, was life. She had to have gotten it from somewhere.

“And you are loved.”

She threw her arms around his chest and let the world fall from her shoulders and down, down, down, crashing and sinking into the water far below. She let her head rest and her ears listen for his heart. He planted a kiss on her forehead and she hoped it would act like poison against the nightmares. No, not like poison. Like her mother’s hands and cool water.

“Please know how loved you are, Kya.”

The sun had sunk lower in the sky. It was beginning to fade from white to orange. It hung just behind Kya and her father. Soon it would meet the sea, and the sea would let it go.

*

It was no longer quite day, but it was not yet quite night. She loved the sky like this most of all. A streak of red on the horizon, a last lingering brilliant blue, and finally on the other side the darkness that would carry with it the stars and the moon.

The chill pricked her skin and felt like a different home. One where summer and winter had superficial meaning. One where old hands of old people who were once right to fear someone like her, fear what her hands could do, now held them tightly, warmly, without question and with love. One where the children saw her as she hoped again to see herself.

It was dark enough now for fire to start looking its best. It had been a long time since she bent just because she could. If she weren’t obliging her father during training, she wouldn’t bother conjuring up all that fear for even another second. Her head felt heavy and fragile like some ancient vase begging to be broken by some small, rowdy, child. Her legs were sore now and would be far worse in the morning. At least she had worn sensible shoes as her father recommended, was it that morning? It couldn’t have been anything less than years ago. But she didn’t just feel weight. She still felt the warmth of the dragon fire, still felt the warmth of her father’s hand at her back, felt the gaze of the creature that seemed to span centuries and no time at all. She still felt herself breathing. In.

She was going to try it.

Out.

Maybe she would make the surface of black seawater dance with gold as they made their way back home.

In.

She closed her eyes. Let fear drain from her.

Out.

It caught her by surprise like it had the very first time. Him too. She felt her eyes crinkle and her lips part. This had to be a fluke.

In.

She turned to her father and they both tilted their heads and raised their eyebrows. Might as well see what happens.

Out.

Again. It happened again. She nurtured the little flame and let it shed proper light on her face and her father’s. Letting them both see the corners of their eyes crinkling and the corners of their mouths lifting into uncontrollable smiles. They both had to be thinking the same thing: wait until Mom sees this.

She let the flame expand and sent it into a burst over the churning water. It cascaded across the sky. The water’s surface didn’t just dance with gold. It danced with red, (yes), blue (yes), purple (yes, wow, really!) Green (there couldn’t have been green! Yes, green. Green fire, really). She gripped the railing and looked up at the stars slowly waking up to the night. She had a feeling that for the first night in a long time she might dream of something good. Or nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You should be proud of your eyeballs for reading so many words. I am grateful! Eternally! Like (wow!) an eternal flame... 
> 
> Anyway, I do promise I have some ideas that don't involve so much angst and dread! These children are actually happy! But even relatively happy kids go Through It, right? We all go Through It right? Maybe it's being 12, maybe it's just having a ................ complex family history. 
> 
> Anywho, really been letting this story bounce around in my braincase for a while, feels nice to have it in writing. As always Dadko makes my heart shatter, Grandpakoda shatters my heart, and so does the idea of Kya bending rainbow fire now forever for the rest of her life aha ha ha ha ;___; 
> 
> Thank you also to my most excellent friends who hear all these ideas and read all these stories before I get the guts to publish them <3


End file.
